September 2007

There have been some early, sweeping changes at Reader’s Digest Association in the last few months since Mary Berner took over as president and CEO following the sudden $2.4 billion acquisition of the company by an investment group led by...

Hearst checks in this issue with its second online-related acquisition in two weeks, buying social shopping site Kaboodle. Hearst’s earlier deal, $150 million for UGO.com, is differentiated by its content focus. The Kaboodle deal involves social networking functionality designed to...

What changes are magazines planning to make when setting their 2008 budgets? Is cutting costs and hunkering down the answer? How about increasing spending on online and events-related initiatives? Here’s what a collection of industry executives say they will be...

Multi-platform, integrated sponsorship sales—from pages to Web sites to events—have become big-ticket sales for magazine publishers. Indeed, most are now in a position to offer a wide range of programs. The challenge, however, is managing the sale post-close—especially when billing...

The recent launch of the Robb Report Global Luxury Index—which tracks stock price performance of luxury goods and services companies—is part of an effort to move the company beyond the perception of being “just” a magazine publisher. “We do not...

Magazine publishers have a unique opportunity to heighten their brand position—not to mention drive revenue—by developing awards programs for the industries they serve. But a well-run program requires a significant effort in building the brand and developing a back-end workflow...

Cheap to put on and generally free to attend, Webinars—in which a publisher delivers a seminar online to a remote audience—have reached critical mass. Publishers that did a handful of Webinars in 2006 have hundreds planned for 2007 and 2008....

Nielsen//NetRatings announced in July that it was adding “total minutes” to its syndicated Internet measurement service. ComScore, another measurement company, also uses this time-based metric in determining how users are interacting with a Web site. The announcement echoed what many...

In August 2006, b-to-b publisher Access Intelligence transformed its circulation department into an audience development department, which would focus on Web and traffic-building as part of its overall audience-generating efforts.

While many print publications have tried in recent years to increase their margins by both cutting on staff and paying less for freelance work, the local and national success of 5280—a Denver-based city and regional magazine—represents an argument for an...

Trends in the market are influencing how CMP’s Business Technology Group produces its e-mail newsletter products. According to Stephen Wellman, editorial director of e-mail newsletters for the group, broad-market, high-circ newsletters are giving way to smaller, more targeted products.